I just beat Final Fantasy X a couple nights ago, and I did it in a most unusual way.

I got Auron's legendary weapon, and kept building my characters for many, many days. (I'm up to something outrageous like 137 hours at the moment).

Finally, I decided the time had come to conquer the boss. So I walked right up to Seymour's final form, which has an HP of 80,000--

--and Auron killed the mofo in ONE MOVE.

That was it! Auron just walked up to him and slashed him with his sword, cutting out about 83,000 of Seymour's HP. I actually got an “Overkill” on him, for crying out loud!

So, next came my encounter with Braska's Final Aeon. It actually took three hits of Auron's sword to beat this guy, as his first form had something like 80,000 HP and his second had 120,000. Anyway, it was a very quick fight.

The ending was sad... did it make me wanna cry? No, not exactly, but it was sad nontheless. But hey... Tidus gets to spend the rest of his (life?) as a noncorporeal entity, so he's really getting the best part of the deal, right?

Then again, if I was given the choice between existing forever but never being able to be with the one you love, or eventually dying but spending the rest of my time with such a great girl, it's pretty obvious which one I'd pick.

Speaking of FF endings. I loved the ending to FFIX. I just knew Zidane had to be the one under that robe, and when he revealed himself and said, “Bring my beloved Dagger to me!”, I marked the hell out.

Actually, the levelling-beyond-comprehension factor is one reason I don't care that much for the FF games. They're far from the only RPG series with levelling problems, mind you, but they're pretty badly abusable.

Take FF6, for example, the one many point to as being the definitive RPG of the 90s. The characters were supposed to be distinct individuals, with independent roles and abilities, and yet the Esper system allowed _every character in the game_ to learn _every spell in the game_. There were still some character-specific skills, but when you can send any four characters against any opposition and cast Ultima-Ultima-Ultima-Ultima, they're not that useful.

Then throw in the fact that once you could survive on the island of the dinosaurs, you could level beyond comprehension in a very short amount of time. Beat one Brachiosaur, get the Economizer, and boom -- you can come pretty close to beating the game with ONE CHARACTER.

FF7 took it even farther into the realm of silliness. Not only were most of the Materia usable by anyone, most could be duplicated -- so now you could customize your spells AND skills any way you wanted, with only the weapon types and limit breaks to distinguish them. Then crank up the experience, and you've got demigods running around. The fact that they had to drop in "ultimate Weapons" with ludicrous HP totals illustrates how much challenge the main game held for any sufficiently advanced party.

Then there's Tactics... which I do love, and played the hell out of. But, again, you can go through the entire game with your original character set and give them every single skill in the game, with time and effort. Orlandu who? By the time you get him, he's actually underpowered; you're better off handing his Excalibur to one of your better-rounded dynamos.

Very few RPGs have the answer to this problem. I'd prefer to see a game where as you level-up, the enemies level-up as well (after all, they're doing SOMETHING while you're spending hours beating on wandering critters), but that doesn't account for all the funky skills you accumulate along the way. Perhaps more intelligent bosses (that aren't just huge piles of HP) and more limits on how powerful characters can get will help. (From what I understand, FFX does limit character skill acquisition, and encourages you to build up everyone in your extended party. These are good signs for the genre.)

Well to drag this 4 day old thread out...I just finished FFX myself...while I didn't go to the extremes that ekedolphin went to (My time was around 57 hours), I did have Auron's and Yuna's legendary weapons plus ALL the Aeons. Anima killed Seymour in one shot.

Then I walked up to the Final Aeon (at about 45 hours) and got SLAUGHTERED!!!! So I think that told me I had to build up some more...this is where I played blitzball, built up my characters, got the weapons, got the last aeon, and that's how I killed the Final Aeon.

When I got the final boss I was worried at first when I say the amount of HP, then I saw the halo's above my characters and laughed!

Yes the ending was sad....no I didn't cry...and yes I was hoping for a FFIX-like ending....oh well. Still very satisfied with the game.

So on my FF games I've completed....7, 9, 10. Currently working on 8 and Tactics as well. (And 4, 5 & 6 thanks to emulators and ROMS )